This blog is about my new Civil War history, Our War: Days and Events in the Fight for the Union.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Coming home

With Meg Heckman, my journalistic colleague, I interviewed
dozens of World War II veterans for an oral-history project and book called We Went to War. I also helped Steve
Raymond, a survivor of the Bataan Death March, write his memoir, Too Dead to Die. One common thread in
these veterans’ stories was this: “I just wanted to do my job and go home.”

During my research for Our
War, I saw the same sentiment in the soldiers’ letters as the Civil War
ground on. For my final chapter I went looking for a man who represented this
near-universal wish of soldiers in all wars.

The man I found was Ransom Sargent of New London, a fifer in
the 11th New Hampshire Volunteers. Sargent married a local woman, Maria French,
in August of 1862 and mustered into his regiment 17 days later. Then, for more
than a thousand days, he did not see her.

Sargent’s letters to Maria, transcripts of which are in the
Rauner Special Collections at Dartmouth College, often express his yearning to
touch her or look into her eyes. In 1865, as the war neared its end, he wrote:

“Oh!
I could read your thoughts sometimes, dear Maria, and what joy it gave me for I
knew that tender look of passion was bestowed only on me. You are my only hope
of happiness in the future. All my plans and bright anticipations could never
be realized if you did not share my joys.”

My
chapter on Sargent, called “Homecoming,” has three points: the “I just want to
go home” attitude of the soldiers, the transition from war to peace on the home front, and the efforts of the citizenry to welcome the soldiers home.

Two
recent events, one personal, the other a local news item, reminded me of this “Homecoming”
chapter.

The
personal event was an encounter at a restaurant with a stranger around my
age who was wearing a Florida Gator cap. I told him I had gone to Florida, and
he asked me when. I said I had only attended for two years during the Vietnam
era, then been drafted. He said, “Thank you for your service.”

That
is a common expression these days, but no one had ever said it to me. I thanked
the man for thanking me. But as sincere as I meant to be, neither his thanks
nor my response altered my feelings about coming home in 1970.

Then
I began to read about an event in Concord tomorrow to welcome home Vietnam
veterans. I hope lots of veterans and citizens show up, and I hope the veterans
feel the love.

I
am not a veteran of that war. I served in the army at its height, but rather
than accept the draft, I enlisted for four years in exchange for a guarantee of
language school. I learned Russian, trained on special radios, and went to Germany to
intercept and analyze Soviet military communications in East Germany.

In
early 1970, I married Monique Praet, a Belgian teacher I had met in Germany. A
short time later, I received orders to come home. I had been in Germany for two
years by then. It had been a terrible time for my country, marked by unending,
unwinnable war, political violence and assassination. I, meanwhile, had come to
appreciate the European mentality, which, for obvious reasons, was skeptical of
war.

I
packed my duffel bag, put on my dress uniform and caught my flight home in
Frankfurt. Monique flew to Florida, where my parents lived. My military flight
landed early in the morning at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. There we
boarded buses for the Philadelphia airport for flights to our next stations. Mine
was Fort Gordon, near Augusta, Ga.

My mother Bernadine with Monique and me
outside the military chapel near Cologne,Germany,
where we were married on Jan. 31, 1970.

That
morning in the Philadelphia airport was my homecoming, and I will never forget
it. From
the moment I walked in wearing my uniform, the civilians in their double-knit suits
and bell-bottoms, miniskirts and flowery blouses, had two reactions to my
presence. Some looked at me with scorn, as though I had just returned from
spearing Vietnamese babies and hoisting them on my bayonet. The others
stared straight through me. I felt hated, invisible.

The moment I realized my uniform made me a pariah, I found a restroom and changed
into civvies.

The
ironies of this experience were thick. I had never been to Vietnam. While many
of my brothers-in-arms had, and while I admired their courage, I knew many –
perhaps most – had gone to war against their will. Personally, I had always opposed the
Vietnam War and identified with the peace protesters.

In
the last months of my enlistment, one of my duties was the funeral detail. I
was on the firing squad for the burial of half a dozen men killed in Vietnam. More
than 40 years later, thinking about this can still move me to tears.

I
hope the Vietnam War veterans who turn out tomorrow find some satisfaction and
closure in Concord’s belated welcome.

As
for my Civil War fifer, Ransom Sargent, he marched and played in two parades in
downtown Concord in June 1865, and he wasn’t thrilled about it. “They kept us
parading up and down the street until dark, as tired as the men were,” he wrote
Maria Sargent after the first one. He thought – hoped – the next day’s parade might be rained
out, but no such luck.

When
it was over, the burning ambition of nearly every soldier came true for Ransom Sargent: He
hopped a train to New London 30 miles away and went home to his Maria.

1 comment:

As much as I've enjoyed all of your posts to date, this one has to rank as my favorite. I wonder sometime if "thank you for your service" is truly a heartfelt expression by all that express it or for lack of a better word the "trendy" thing to say. I am sure my second example is in the minority in this case.

My Dad, Uncles, Grandfathers, and Great Grandfathers were all veterans in their day and it is something I am truly proud of.